


A Strategic Alliance

by JaneTurenne



Category: Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-08 08:21:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneTurenne/pseuds/JaneTurenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>President Romana and Coordinator Narvin duel for the title of Gallifrey's True Protector, to delayed but satisfactory results.</p><p>(Warning: this fic contains descriptions of physical torture.  It is free from blood, gore or permanent injury to any party, so I'm not certain I think it deserves the 'graphic descriptions of violence' tag, but be advised.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Strategic Alliance

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to agapi42 for the beta. This fic is a belated birthday gift to eloralousitra, with love.

Narvin maintains a healthy respect for Gallifreyan law, now as ever, but this particular rule has always been so _easy_ to bend. In the long run, he tells himself, his less-than-scrupulously-legal activities have been of nothing but aid to his planet. Yes, he has been hacking into the Matrix since he was nothing more than a boy in the Academy, but if he hadn’t, he would never have been able to seal so many back-doors as Coordinator. He has locked down the Matrix so tightly in recent years that his former furtive skulking has grown brash. Now, unlike in his younger years, he need fear no fellow malefactor. He is the only one left who can enter here uninvited, and at the moment, the one legitimate occupant of this place must not enter for fear of Pandora.

Narvin has failed to take into account the fact that the one legitimate occupant of this place is chronically bad at observing anything that resembles a sensible precaution.

This is merely a routine evening of secret-searching, sifting through this virtual universe for any information that might give him an advantage in the endless game of transtemporal security. Until the voice breaks in on his thoughts, emanating from nowhere and everywhere, instantly recognizable.

“ _Finally_ ,” his Lady President says. “I’ve always known you made a habit of trespassing on what’s mine, Coordinator, but do you know how long I’ve been waiting to actually _catch_ you?”

His first instinct is to freeze. His second instinct is to run for the nearest Matrix door, to get himself out of here as quickly as he can. Unfortunately, he realizes too late, his instincts are calibrated in improper order, and his moment’s hesitation makes the urge to flee too little and too late.

The universe _twists_ around him, everything changing in an instant. This virtual reality belongs to someone else, not Narvin, and now she’s standing in front of him. She could appear to him in any way she chose, but he thinks she must look just as she presently does in life. She is clad in a white nightgown, something simple, unromantic, but thin enough that he can see--for the first time--the shape of her body beneath, curves and contours usually concealed under layers of robe. And on her head sits the Coronet of Rassilon, the circlet of gold and gems that makes her mistress of this place, absolute ruler in this unreal realm of all that she surveys.

What she surveys, just now, is Narvin. He lies on a narrow bench that bends at his waist, tilting his torso forty-five degrees so he can see her where she stands before him. His arms and legs are strapped securely to the bench, and with no more than a thought she has done away with his robes, his shoes. He wears only a pair of black trousers, somewhat tight, laced in front, his chest bare. He has no idea _why_ she has chosen to see him this way, but it makes him uncomfortable in a different sense from the general unease of the captured criminal.

This place they inhabit does not, of course, truly exist, not in a physical sense. Romana has not bothered to add any background detail. They face each other in a sea of fuzzy grey, and the only object here for him to focus on is her.

“Madam President,” he says.

“Narvin.” She elongates the first syllable of his name to the point of a drawl. He has a fleeting mental impression of her winding that ‘a’ around her finger, drawing it out of him, pulling something physical from his chest. “ _You_ shouldn’t be here.”

He flushes, and forces himself not to struggle against his restraints. He won’t escape, not if she doesn’t want him to, not here. He has no idea what she is doing or plans to do, but he knows himself irrevocably and undeniably caught--the one situation that his experience as a spy has taught him most keenly to fear. Still, she hasn’t taken his voice from him, and his mind has always been his greatest weapon.

“No more should you,” he points out. It would be a weak opening with any other President, but Romana’s nature includes a childishly combative streak. If he can turn this encounter into one of their usual shouting matches, he may diminish its importance, make it seem routine.

“I am the President of Gallifrey, Coordinator. The Matrix is my domain, and I require no one’s permission to enter it. Which is adamantly _not_ the case for you.”

“ _I_ was gathering information. I hadn’t realized you wanted your CIA Coordinator kept ignorant.” He looks her square in the eye. “You chose me to protect this planet, my Lady. I assumed you’d rather not know how I and my Agency go about it. Most Presidents wouldn’t.”

“I am not most Presidents.” He knows that, only too well. The Lady Romanadvoratrelundar isn’t like _anyone_ else. “I may have chosen you for the CIA, but _I_ protect my planet, Coordinator. That’s why I’m so pleased to have your company here tonight.”

“Pleased?” he asks, bemused.

“Oh yes.” She takes a step toward him, then another. Her feet are unclad, and her arches and toes, the way they move, are distracting in a way that he most definitely cannot afford. “I don’t like being kept ignorant any more than you do, Narvin, even about things I’m not supposed to know. Not where Gallifrey and its safety are concerned. We’re alike that way, you and I.” She stands just beside him now, looking down at him, hands clasped casually behind her back. “And we each of us have our little ways of finding secrets out.”

The implication of those last words isn’t difficult to miss, not while he’s bound, half-naked, and completely in her power. “An interrogation, Madam President?” He tries to exude a scornful confidence that he doesn’t feel. “I thought your self-righteous type didn’t stoop to those kinds of tactics. That’s for _my_ kind of person, the ones you keep around to look down on while we let you sleep snug and smug in your bed at nights.”

“I would prefer that this didn’t escalate to a full-scale interrogation, as a matter of fact,” she says, briskly, “as, I should imagine, would you. But if that _should_ happen to become necessary... Well, in our lines of work, Narvin, we have to take our pleasures where we can find them, and I have a difficult time resisting such a perfect piece of irony.” Romana snaps her fingers, and a machine springs to existence from the nothingness just beside them. Narvin recognizes it instantly, and nearly laughs--because the irony _is_ palpable--but instead makes a brief noise that he quickly manages to suppress. The mind probe. Of _course_.

“You’ve spent enough hours in my office attempting to convince me to legalize it again,” she continues. “But in _here_...” Romana glances around, her gaze indicating the imagined space around them. “...I’m afraid that law can’t protect you in the Matrix. Nothing counts, in here. I can do anything I like with you, and it will never have happened at all. Your physical body won’t show so much as a scratch.” She considers. “Unless I actually manage to stop your hearts, of course, but I should _hope_ it wouldn’t come to _that_.”

Narvin swallows. “Was that a threat?” he asks, carefully maintaining the coldness in his voice; that tone is born of fear, but sounds to anyone else’s ears like menace. “I like to be certain when someone is saying they’re trying to kill me.”

“Kill you?” Romana widens her eyes, ostentatiously innocent. She has the face to pull it off. Narvin has always respected this woman, given credit to her strength, but he thinks he’s underestimated how _dangerous_ she can be. It is a mistake he will never make again. “Oh, no. No, I don’t want to hurt you. Well, no more than I usually do, and I’ve always resisted the urge in the past.” Her smile appears so genuine that he almost thinks it might be. “I want your _trust_ , Narvin, not your head on a plate.”

“You think you’ll earn my trust by tying me to a table?”

Her lips wriggle. “I think that if you prove your trust, you’ll find yourself untied quickly enough. I simply cannot have you running away in the meanwhile.”

“And what leads you to suppose that I don’t trust the President of Gallifrey?” he asks. _Apart from the fact that I have made no secret of my disdain for your policies, that is._ “I accepted a position under you, my Lady. I am yours to command.” He gives her his oiliest smile. “If you’d simply tell me what you want from me, why _wouldn’t_ I give it, even without...” Narvin tries to gesture, but is only able to tug at the straps binding his arms, which fortunately makes just as effective a punctuation. “...all this?”

“That’s very sensible of you.” Romana smiles pleasantly. “I suppose, then, that you won’t mind just telling me...where the Key of Rassilon is hidden.”

It catches him completely off-guard. “The Key?” he asks, feeling stupid even as he says it.

She rolls her eyes. “ _Yes_ , Narvin, the Key. The Great Key, gateway to the Eye of Harmony itself, most formidable of all the Rassilonate artifacts. Unless you’ve other secrets even _more_ worthy of my attention?”

He gapes for a moment, then shuts his mouth tight. “Why would I know how to find the Great Key?” he asks her. “That’s the Chancellor’s job.”

Romana’s brow furrows instantly. In his position, that was a dangerous bluff, and she’s just called it without hesitation. “It _used_ to be the Chancellor’s job,” she corrects, her voice hard and sharp. “Kindly don’t treat me like a fool, Narvin. Oh, I realize that Presidents aren’t _meant_ to know that the secret now rests in the hands of the Coordinators--precisely to avoid situations like this one, I suppose. But Coordinators aren’t _meant_ to have unfettered access to the Matrix, and you clearly do. No matter what is _meant_ to be the case, I am well aware that the location of the Key is locked inside your head. You are going to tell me, sooner or later. And if it should happen to be sooner, we might not only avoid any further awkwardness, but actually make this a notably... pleasant experience, for all concerned.”

“Pleasant?” he says, incredulous.

She circles his chair, coming to rest just behind him. She plants her hands to either side of his head, and her face hovers into view above him. As she leans slightly forward, the strap of her nightgown slips down one of her shoulders. “Yes,” says Romana. “Pleasant.”

And Narvin understands. In the real world, the slide of fabric against skin might happen of its own accord. But this is the Matrix. This is Romana’s domain. Nothing here happens without her consent. Here, an uncovered strip of skin is a message, as his own near-nudity is a message, and he’s just learned to read them. His breath lodges in his throat, uninhaled.

“I need to know about the Key, Narvin,” Romana says, carefully. “I don’t want it for my own reasons. This isn’t about me. But there are dark times coming for Gallifrey. I need to protect the planet. I need to protect it every way I know how. I need every power I can possibly command. And when I say I want your trust, I mean no more or less than that. I need you to believe that I mean the best for Gallifrey, and to give me the tools to do everything I can.”

Even upside-down, he can read the significance of that expression on her face. They are playing a strange, delicate game, and he chooses his next move with care. “And if I do?” he asks.

“ _When_ you do,” says Romana, bending close, “I will be terribly... grateful.”

In the context of this conversation, of her behavior these past few microspans, the kiss should not surprise him. In that context it doesn’t, particularly. But in the context of their relationship as a whole, the three years they have known each other, it surprises him very much. She is framing his face in her hands, and her lips are soft, and her mouth is honeysweet, and it doesn’t mean anything at all. Before ever she begins kissing him he knows this for a weapon, a tactic, the same as the setting and the clothing and the shackles and the mind probe casting its shadow across his face. But before she’s finished kissing him, he has realized how much he already wants her to do it again, weapon or not.

“Narvin,” she murmurs against his mouth, “tell me where the Key is.”

“Madam President,” he takes one deep breath, filling his lungs with the smell of her, “if you believe that your charms are sufficient to win you one of the greatest secrets of our entire species, you are grievously deluded about the extent of your own appeal.”

The reaction is instantaneous. He has seen her angry with him more times than he would care to count, but this isn’t the same. For the first time, he appreciates the distinction between being Romana’s opponent and being her enemy, and for an instant his brain is convinced that the pain searing through him is a direct result of the fury burning in her eyes. And then he tastes the familiarity of that agony, and knows it for what it is.

CIA training is far more thorough than the rest of Gallifrey has ever been permitted to understand. One in four prospective Agents regenerates at least once--on Gallifrey, in CIA custody, before ever setting foot on his first mission. One in twenty dies. During Narvin’s tenure those numbers have not grown, but neither have they decreased, and, if anything, he has implemented even more rigorous methods of preparation than those to which he was subjected as a trainee. The future of Gallifrey rests on his shoulders and those of his Agents, and they must all prove themselves strong enough to carry it.

This is what Narvin thinks as the mind probe sinks its claws into the walls of his consciousness and _tears_. If he had not been tortured in his youth, in just this way, by members of his own Agency, his reaction time would not be so instantaneous. Romana might have stolen the secret she wants and been out of his mind again before his mental barriers had raised themselves at all. The pain he feels now is nothing but a validation, proving the worth of other pains, older and worse. This is nothing. This is _good_. He easily endures the scant few nanospans of torture--gasps tightly, but manages not to scream. And then Romana deactivates the probe.

The anger in her eyes is gone, replaced by contrition. “I’ve never done that before,” she says. She swallows hard, and sets her chin. “I believe you’re right about me, Narvin. My...what was it? My ‘self-righteous type?’ I’m not a stranger to torture from the other direction--I’ve been where you are now. But this side is infinitely worse.”

“Really,” he says, deadpan skeptical, though he knows from experience that she’s right. “This hurts you far more than it hurts me, is that it?”

“Yes,” she says, earnestly. “Don’t make me do it again, Narvin.” She’s still standing just behind him, cradling his face in her hands, and now her fingers caress gently over his temples, his ears, his cheeks. After the pain of the mind probe, the touch is unimaginably soothing. “I will, if I have to. For Gallifrey’s sake, I have to know about the Key. But isn’t that in itself enough to prove that I deserve to know? The fact that I would... would abase myself, would resort to tactics I despise, because I _know_ that my planet’s needs are more important than the guilt I’ll have to face? Isn’t that the kind of sacrifice a true leader ought to make?”

”Oh yes,” Narvin says. The longer he can keep her talking, the more strength he can regain before she attacks his mind again. “Torturing her subjects is the mark of the very _best_ kind of President.”

”To misquote a friend,” Romana says, sadness in her eyes and the set of her lips, “sometimes it isn’t what we do, it’s why we do it.”

“And consolidating the Rassilonate artifacts to gain near-limitless power is a purely _noble_ end.”

”I have no intention of using that power for personal reasons,” she says firmly. “Not for any other reason than the protection of Gallifrey. I give you my word, Narvin. Accuse me of what you will, but I would hope you had realized by now that I am honest to a fault.”

It was one of the first things he ever realized about her, almost the moment they met. If it comes to that, it was the first portion of Romana’s character that Narvin ever consciously _liked_ , though in his professional capacity he recognizes his President’s candor for the liability it is. In spite of himself, he begins to consider the possibility that she is telling the truth now as well, but that makes no difference to his duty. The location of the Great Key is a sacred secret. He _cannot_ betray it, no matter _who_ asks it of him, and especially not to a President. The Artifacts of Rassilon were divided for a reason. No one person should possess so much power, even the ruler of Gallifrey. And especially not a ruler who has displayed such disregard for the sacred traditions of Gallifrey, not to mention such lack of concern for her planet’s safety in flooding the Academy with potentially hostile aliens.

Narvin takes stock of his own resources, and judges that he is as ready as he will be for a second assault on his mind. Torture ought to be psychological as well as physical, a matter of demonstrating power. If Narvin can choose the moments when that pain hits him, can provoke Romana into working on his schedule, he can retain the feeling of control that will be so crucial to his strength in the coming minutes and hours. Or days--or months--she could keep him here forever, if she likes. He refuses to ask himself whether she _would_. A man in his position can’t afford that kind of question.

“What I have _realized_ about you,” he says, sneering, “is that you are precisely the same as any other Gallifreyan politician: _sickeningly_ moral right up until the moment when it interferes with your own self-interest. Except that unlike most, you might just be young and naive enough to actually believe your own rhetoric. Perhaps you’ll grow out of it some day. Or perhaps you’ll always be too weak to see yourself for what you are.”

And there it is again, that vicious flash of anger in her eyes, and the answering crash of pain. He forces himself to detach from the situation. He analyses, clinically, and comes to the conclusion that she has turned the probe up by one setting. That conclusion is only logical, given the fact that his own scream is now echoing in his ears.

With the same forced perspective, he notes that she is improving as an interrogator. She leaves the mind probe activated for longer this time, to continue pushing relentlessly against his mental barriers in an effort to batter them down. He is aware enough to watch how quickly the spark of fury fades from Romana’s eyes, how rapidly the color drains from her cheeks, leaving her drawn and obviously miserable. He doesn’t think it’s an act for his benefit; his eyes are barely open, so little she could easily fail to notice, and she’s looking anywhere but into his face. But he refuses to take anything for granted, and as he begins to shake with pain, it becomes more difficult to spare any sympathy for the woman causing this sensation.

His inner chronometer tells him that sixteen nanospans pass before she turns off the probe. Academically, he knows that he would have been capable of withstanding at least six times as long on the same setting before breaking, dying or being driven out of his mind. But as he twitches through the aftershocks and struggles for breath, it’s hard to truly believe as much.

He must have closed his eyes, at some point, perhaps even lost consciousness for a moment. When he’s fully aware again, Romana is no longer hovering above him. He has to struggle slightly more upright to clearly see her face as she stands beside his chair. But her hands are almost too visible, practically touching his eyes as she wipes the sweat from his brow with a soft cloth and a softer touch.

”There now,” she says, and the cloth vanishes from her hand. However it might feel, Narvin reminds himself, this world is nothing but an illusion. Nothing here has physical substance. It may be easier for him to fight the mind probe if he can remember that fact. And then again, it probably won’t. His mind is hooked into the Matrix, and Romana controls the Matrix. The same sorts of electrical signals that his brain might receive from his body, it can receive just as easily through the Matrix, and no amount of mind-over-matter will convince his neurons otherwise. Real or not, this situation is deadly serious, and it hinges on the woman whose hand is now resting on his naked chest.

”Hope you... enjoyed that... Madam President.” He is still finding it difficult to breathe.

”Not in the slightest,” she says, and swallows. “ _Please_ don’t oblige me to do it again, Narvin.

”I think that might be... only time... ever heard you say the word... ‘please.’”

“Then you’ll appreciate how strongly I feel about this,” she says. There is an audible quaver in her voice, and he wonders whether she is actually _that_ good an actress. “Stop being an idiot, Narvin. You are bound and trapped and _entirely_ under my control. I can keep you here as long as I like. I can hurt you in any way that either of us can imagine. I could even kill you. You have _no choice_. You have already proved what you are willing to endure to protect this secret, but we both know that you cannot protect it forever, not under these conditions. Don’t force either of us to go on with this. Tell me what I need to know, on the solemn understanding that I will not abuse that information, and save yourself from more of this. Save _me_ from more of this. _Please_.” 

He wheezes, a sound that would be a sarcastic laugh if he were capable. “You’ve just been torturing me, and you think I’d go out of my way to save _you_?”

“Yes, I do.”

“ _Why_?”

The seat to which Narvin is strapped isn’t wide enough for Romana to sit beside him, or it wasn’t a moment ago. But now it is, and she does. “Because you want to,” she says.

“Do I indeed.”

“Yes,” she says, and bends down. Deliberately, she lifts the Coronet from her brow and lays it in her lap, where it sits for a moment before vanishing altogether. This object was only a representation, he knows. The physical coronet is no doubt still sitting on her real head, in the real world, providing the interface through which she is connected to the Matrix. For a moment he is puzzled as to why she has bothered removing this crown. Then she leans in and touches her forehead to his. Her hand is still pressed to his chest, between his hearts. “Just as I want to save you.”

On the long list of questions Narvin has never taken the time to ponder, his President’s hypothetical preferred style of interrogation certainly never struck him as one he ought to make a priority. Now that he has learned that answer, he thinks that it would have been far beyond his capacity to predict, and yet that it is entirely characteristic of her. It’s nonsensical, verging on the ridiculous, and that’s _precisely_ why it’s so compelling. She shouldn’t be able to play both the sympathetic and antagonistic roles at once, relentless one moment and gentle the next. She shouldn’t be able to mix seduction and torture and make them seem a part of the same consistent narrative. He could resist either approach, and intends to resist both. But the mixture of the two, which ought to be laughable, only makes the pain cut deeper, and makes Romana...

No. _No._ “You are my President,” he says, as coldly as he can manage. “If I have ever given the impression of caring what happens to you one way or another, it was a matter of duty to the office. Sparing your _feelings_ doesn’t begin to interest me.”

“Fine,” she says, leaning back slightly. “Then _this_ oughtn’t to bother you in the slightest.”

It takes him longer than it should to understand what she means, but his brain has good reason to be working more slowly than usual. She has turned on the mind probe again, at what he judges to be the same intensity as before, and the pain seems to be boring holes straight through his skull. But in a bright-hot moment of clarity, he realizes that the scream he’s hearing isn’t his own this time.

Romana’s hand is still planted on Narvin’s chest. He remembers the warnings from his days in training never to touch a subject who was undergoing this form of interrogation, because the waves emitted by the probe would resonate through the flesh. Romana is feeling exactly the same pain that Narvin is, and he thinks for a long moment that she must not have known, must have done this to herself accidentally. He assumes that she will turn off the probe almost immediately, or pull away from him, or both.

To his horror, she does neither. Her arms give out three nanospans in and she collapses onto his chest, but she doesn’t stop the probe. She could, easily. In the real world, she would need to press a button on the device itself, but here, Romana could not only turn the probe off with a thought, she could wipe the thing out of its tenuous existence. She has _chosen_ to share in this misery. It goes on and on, ten nanospans, twelve, fifteen, and she’s sobbing with pain, and yet she won’t save herself, and he can’t stand it. It’s worse, so much worse, than feeling this himself. He finds himself gritting his teeth, fighting an insane battle to speak through the pain.

“Why?” he manages, barely, and then, with enormous effort, “ _Stop!_ ”

She does stop the probe, almost immediately. In this aftermath he has not only his own shakes to contend with, but hers as well, and the lack of synchronization between his own body’s twitches and hers where she rests atop him is maddening in the extreme. He wonders if she realizes that she’s whimpering every time she exhales. He has been specifically trained to cope with this, but he doubts she’s ever felt pain like this before, no matter what she said about previous experience. He cannot allow her to go into shock. He can’t _move_ , can hardly breathe, but he finds himself struggling to lift his head, to nudge her with his shoulders or his knees, to do something, _anything_ to get through to her.

“What are you _doing_?” he snarls, as best he can. “Why... why would you... What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Only... fair.” Her voice is faint, no more than a whisper, but at least she’s speaking. “I am... President. It’s not right... that I should make you... suffer for Gallifrey ...in a way I’m not willing to... endure myself.”

What little breath Narvin had regained goes out of him again.

It _hurts_ him. Of all the things she has done to him tonight, this is the one that hurts. Narvin knows the rules of his universe. Other people are self-serving, other people hurt each other, other people betray each other and themselves. Other people are cold, cruel, devious, and can usually be bought. Other people want pleasure, other people want glory, other people want power, other people want to think well of themselves and to be thought well of by others. Their commitment to those they care about comes secondary to these, and their commitment to ideals last of all. Narvin has steered his lives by these truths, and they have never led him wrong. But none of those precepts, not one, is remotely compatible with his President torturing herself because she believes it to be _fair_.

Narvin has never included himself in these assessments. He knows full well that _he_ is willing to live or to die for his beliefs, and without the ostentation of zealotry or the self-indulgence of martyrdom. But life taught him long ago that no one else could be trusted to think or behave as he does. He takes no pride nor feels no shame in his exceptionality; he merely acknowledges it as fact. No one else loves Gallifrey as he does, or would suffer for it as he will. But the idea that there might be someone else--might _have been_ someone else--and that it could be the Lady President, _his_ Lady President, Romana, and that he could have fought with her, argued with her, been near her day by day, and that he could have betrayed her, and been kissed by her, and seen the signs, and ignored them, or fought against them, and _not known_ , not known until _right now_ , that all this time he _hasn’t been alone_ , is...

Horrible. It’s like being cut in half. It’s _horrible_. It is the worst thing she could possibly have done to him in a hundred years of trying, and he doesn’t think she even knows, and he doesn’t think he’s ever going to recover.

“And,” she says, a little more strongly, completely unaware of how he’s fracturing inside, “to prove...a point.” She waggles her fingers, feebly, and something springs into existence a few feet away: a large silver mirror. “Look at your own face,” she mumbles, struggling to do the same, “and tell me again...that you don’t care what I...feel.”

He doesn’t need to look. He doesn’t want to look. He knows what his face looks like. What he doesn’t know is what his Lady President looks like when she’s lying mostly on top of him clad only in a nightgown. It is in his best interest, in her best interest, that he _never_ know what that looks like, even as it’s happening to him. But she ordered him to look, and so he looks, and irrationally thanks every deity he’s never believed in that his hands are securely bound. If he had them, he would do something unforgivable in this moment of weakness and doubt--put an arm around her, or touch her hair, or pull her face up to his, or crush her to him as though trying to absorb her through his skin.

He has lost his control, and there was never anything of him but control. He is broken. He is not himself, and may not ever be again. He struggles for something, _anything_ , any lie that might sound convincing either to himself or to her.

“This is all... a ploy,” he manages. “You’re... you’re trying to establish an artificial sense of trust, through... through shared suffering.”

She shudders again as the remnants of pain keep echoing through her, and presses more closely against him. “Something like that,” she agrees. “But if the suffering isn’t artificial... why should the trust be?”

He closes his eyes tight, fights, _fights_ not to believe. “Because you want something from me,” he says, and hears the strain in his own voice. “Because you’re only doing this for your own gain.”

“How many times do I have to say it?” She is steady enough now to raise her head and look at him. “Your trust _is_ the thing I want. I would much rather you told me about the Key willingly, because you trusted me, than because I’d torn that knowledge from you.” She considers his face, and struggles almost to a sitting position. “Or is that how you need this to be? I know you made a promise, Narvin, and I suppose that must mean something to you. I’ve always believed that the law that separates the President from the Key is in place so that even a President must prove herself worthy to wield it, and so that it is only used in cases of utmost emergency. To my mind, the spirit of the law permits the Key to be entrusted to a President under those stringent conditions, but I recognize that the _letter_ of the law is not as flexible. You did take a vow not to share the Key’s location with anyone.”

“Yes,” he says, uncertainly, wondering what she’s leading up to.

She nods. “If you feel that this is something you cannot give, I can respect that,” she says. A spasm of pain overtakes her, and she winces and sways. He shouldn’t care. He cares. “But what you cannot _give_ may be taken from you, and that is no fault of yours.” She looks down at his arms. The metal loops binding him to the chair have cut into his flesh as he strained against them. She touches the angry red stripes on his skin, so delicately he can hardly feel her fingertips. Her lips are tight, and her eyes are sad. “I’ll turn on the probe just one more time,” she says. “And this time, stop struggling. Just let it take the information from your brain. You won’t have told anyone anything voluntarily. You won’t have betrayed your vow, and we can both stop suffering.” She looks back up into his eyes. “Is that an option your conscience can accept?”

He almost thanks her for giving him something he can work with. “You think that I would surrender one of our species’ greatest secrets on the _technicality_ that I haven’t said it out loud?” he asks, and it almost sounds properly scornful. “That kind of petty hair-splitting is beneath you, Romana.”

“Coming from you, the assumption that anything whatever is beneath me sounds suspiciously like a compliment, especially when you bother to use my name.”

She is smiling at him, and he loses all the ground he regained in these past few microspans of struggling. He swallows hard and sets his expression. His frown may not show his confusion, how overwhelmed he feels, but he has serious concerns about his eyes. “I’m not going to tell you, Madam President,” he says, “and I’m not going to just stand to one side and let you take the knowledge from me. Now are you going to turn that damned thing on again, or aren’t you?”

She purses her lips, and frowns, and inclines her head slightly in acknowledgment. Quietly, she stretches out beside him and rests her arm across his chest.

“Let go,” he insists.

“I don’t believe that I will,” she replies, in that peculiar tone of hers that is equal parts petulant and resolute, and the mind probe turns itself back on.

Romana has adjusted the probe to a still higher setting this time, and the pain is several degrees beyond excruciating. Narvin can feel the shove of it against his mental defenses, like a hundred battering rams simultaneously slamming against the walls of his mind. He should be focusing all his energy on keeping those walls strong, and instead, more of his thoughts than not are devoted to the woman screaming into his shoulder, her nails digging into his chest.

This is more than she can safely take. He knows that almost immediately. His training did more than simply to teach him what this feels like. There is a layer of callus, a certain immunity that builds up from extended exposure to such treatment, and it is a part of Narvin’s resistance. Besides that, he is well-versed in coping techniques, some of them so long practiced that he applies them now without even thinking. Romana has none of those advantages. If she pushes herself to endure as much punishment as he can, she will kill herself before his mental barriers show so much as a hairline crack.

That thought panics him in a way that the torture itself doesn’t come close to managing. He tries to shove her away from him, but his limbs are bound. He tries to speak, but his breath is gone. He goes so far as to consider spitting in Romana’s face, if only to get her attention, but his mouth is bone-dry. In his lives, at moments, he has been powerless; in some sense, he has been powerless for nearly the past span. But he has never _felt_ powerless to this degree before, and it makes his hearts speed dangerously in his chest.

He cannot do this. He cannot _do_ this. He cannot split his focus this way. The mind probe will tear into his memory if he allows it to do so and steal the secret he swore to protect. He shouldn’t care about _anything_ else, anything but his planet. He is being tortured and manipulated and toyed-with, and his judgment has been compromised, and these feelings are unreal. Romana has bound herself to the idea of Gallifrey in his mind, but it’s nothing more than an unspeakably well-judged tactic. Gallifrey is what Narvin loves, Gallifrey is what he must protect, and by linking herself to that idea, Romana has made herself seem worthy of the devotion he gives only to his world.

But it’s a lie, he tries to tell himself. It’s all a lie. He doesn’t care, he _cannot_. His Lady President is perfectly free to kill herself if it suits her. The next President will find Narvin here and release him, or perhaps the Matrix itself will let him go once Romana is no longer controlling it. Once there is no more Romana to control it. No more Romana, and no more stupid, impossible hope of a real, living _person_ for whom Narvin could care without feeling that he had betrayed his duty. With whom he might actually _share_ the burden he carries, share a life, share a tangible connection. This childish, reckless, _treacherous_ hope which he cannot afford, which he has always done without, and which will drive him completely insane should he find himself trapped here for hours or days embraced by the corpse of the woman whose life, in this moment, feels so perilously significant.

He is so caught up in fighting himself that he almost fails to register the cessation of the mind probe. When he does, there is no accompanying relief, because the panic that flares up in him is more than enough to compensate for the lack of physical pain. Romana’s body is spasming violently, but her eyes are closed, and he cannot see any voluntary movement on her part--including breath.

“Romana!” He is drawing in breath in painful gasps, desperate to speak, and thrashing against his restraints in ways that have nothing to do with muscle spasms. “Dammit! _Romana_!”

He might fail to notice the minute fluttering of her eyelashes, if he wasn’t watching her with all his attention. “Romana, let me have my arms,” he says, urgently. “I won’t try to escape, you have my word, just let my arms free, _now_.”

There is an excruciating pause, and then the metal strips binding his arms disappear. He has his hands on Romana’s shoulders in an instant, pulling her up so he can get a good look at her. Between the agony his whole body has undergone and the specific bruising left by his bonds, Narvin’s arms scream in protest at this sudden motion, but he cannot possibly care about that now. He moves one palm so that it nearly touches Romana’s lips, feeling for breath--terrifyingly faint, but there.

“Breathe, Romana,” he orders. “Come on now, one good deep breath.”

Her next breath is still distressingly weak, but it is obvious that she is sufficiently conscious to make an effort. Carefully, he lays her head down on his chest. “Breathe with me,” he instructs, and forces himself to draw deep, regular breaths. “Focus on my breathing, and match it.” She is still shivering against him, and he is rubbing her arms before he can think about it. “And materialize a blanket for us, if you can. You’re in shock, Romana, we have to get you warm.”

The blanket takes a moment, but it does arrive eventually, and her breathing makes slow but consistent progress. He tucks the blanket around them both, and holds her, and gives himself permission finally to feel his own pain, and does his utmost to think about nothing at all.

Seven full microspans come and go before Romana stirs against his chest. She stretches out her legs, and he catches his breath as her bare toes brush against his ankle. “How do you feel?” he asks her, and immediately regrets it.

He can actually feel her smile, her curling lips brushing against his skin. “For the heartsless Coordinator of the CIA,” she murmurs, “you have a shocking talent for taking care of people.”

The words ‘not people, just you’ are halfway past his teeth before he yanks back hard on his own reins. “That is a libelous falsehood,” he says instead, “and if you ever make that claim to anyone else, I will deny it to my last breath.” He huffs out an almost-laugh. “Though that’s something of an assumption, I suppose. It’s looking more and more likely that I will draw my last breath before either of us has a chance to speak to anyone else.”

He is surprised by how quickly Romana turns her head up to look at him. “How can you possibly be so calm about it?” she asks.

“Today is as good a day as any to die for my planet.”

She makes a face that he cannot entirely identify. It may simply be disapproval without anger. With Romana, it is almost unheard of to find the one without the other. “You would, wouldn’t you,” she says. “If you truly believed you were protecting Gallifrey.” It isn’t really a question, but he answers it anyway.

“Without hesitation.”

“Then I suppose I’ve exhausted any hope of making progress with the stick.” She wriggles upwards until their eyes are at a level. “Good. I infinitely prefer the carrot.”

Narvin frowns. “What’s a ‘carrot’?”

“In this particular case,” says Romana, “it’s something a bit like this.”

He doesn’t have time to dodge. He wants to believe that he would have found the strength to do so, if he had seen the kiss coming, but recognizes that as a somewhat overly optimistic analysis of his own self-control. He adamantly _doesn’t_ pull away once his brain catches up to her mouth. He restrains his hands, barely, from pulling her closer, and doesn’t lean into her any more than he can possibly help. He does not throw himself into this kiss with reckless abandon, any more than he did to the other--even though this kiss feels so different, because _he_ feels so changed. But the fact remains that he cannot force himself to pull away.

Romana lingers, takes her time about manipulating him (and she is manipulating him, he insists to himself; this is not a matter for debate). She moves beside him in small, tortuous ways, dangerous precisely because they feel so directionless, so unrehearsed. She isn’t grinding her hips into his or stroking his neck, not anything so blatant, only arching a little closer, nudging to deepen the kiss, flattening her hands against his chest. He tries to convince himself that angling his head to allow her better access to his mouth is a strategic maneuver--that the perceived innocence of the embrace up to now has been a part of the problem, and that a certain degree of escalation will actually improve his resistence. He doesn’t even begin to believe himself.

Narvin’s training didn’t leave him less prepared to resist this brand of interrogation than any other. The idea that his species is asexual is a piece of disinformation that Narvin himself concocted and had quietly disseminated amongst the temporal powers, specifically to discourage attempts to seduce his Agents into sharing the secrets of time. In reality, most Gallifreyans are simply possessed of a healthy sense of decorum and a reticence to allow their private affairs to become public knowledge. Narvin appreciates the physical pleasure of sex as much as anyone, but has been taught so well that he might almost claim to be possessed of no urges or drives in that respect. As a rule, sensual awareness is a switch that he keeps turned off.

Dismissing that first kiss from Romana, her unsubtle attempt at a sweeter brand of coercion, required no effort whatever on Narvin’s part. But since then she has tangled him up inside, transformed his devotion to duty into a weakness and exploited it with consummate skill. Narvin knows his Lady President’s weaknesses as well as she knows his: she is a poor liar, a worse actress, and no better than average in her judgment of people and their motives. And yet, somehow, these have become her advantage too. It is so tempting to _believe_ this kiss and all that has come before it, because Romana is so habitually honest. It is so unaccustomedly difficult for him to lie in return by shutting down his awareness of her body. It feels impossible to behave as he knows so well he ought, but he finally summons the required self-control and pulls his mouth away from hers.

The correct thing for him to do now, his brain informs him, is to say something cutting or dismissive or snide. Regrettably, however, it is less forthcoming where supplying the remark in question is concerned. Romana opens her eyes to look at him. Her gaze is inquiring but oddly guileless, as though it matters to her what he thought of that kiss in and of itself, whether he liked it, whether it moved him in some intangible way, rather than whether it served to advance her cause. It occurs to him that this is the kind of thought he ought to quash, but that realization comes too late. In an effort to prevent any more such ideas from manifesting themselves, he gives voice to the first comment he can find that seems better than _entirely_ unacceptable.

“Are you planning on doing that again?” he asks, aiming for unconcerned, and nearly enough hitting it to avoid a visible wince.

“Do you want me to?”

He cocks his head. “In this situation, does what I want really matter?”

“It does to me.”

He shakes his head, and, for the first time since he got here, lets his feelings show plainly on his face. “You,” he says, incredulous almost to the point of wonder, “are the worst interrogator by whom I have ever had the misfortune to be questioned.” _And the best_ , he doesn't add.

“Thank you.” She leans in to kiss him again, but this time he is expecting it, and dodges.

“I thought it mattered whether I wanted more or not.”

“It does,” she says, “but I didn't really need to ask.”

Again, he only narrowly avoids her kiss. “I realize you learned your craft under Braxiatel and had some excuse for picking up his habits, but has prolonged exposure to him not been enough to teach you that chronic overconfidence is not, in fact, attractive?”

“That sounded suspiciously like jealousy,” she says, with a teasing little grin. Before he can deny it, she continues, “And it isn't overconfidence. I've simply been fighting against my own mask for so long that I've learned to recognize it in others.”

Against all reason, this has become the most comfortable conversation Narvin has conducted since he doesn't know when, real in a way he's not had for so long. He tries to tell himself that this sense is an illusion, but there are limits to his ability for self-deception. He finds it beyond his capabilities to convince himself that his own feeling of comfort does not in fact exist. “Mask,” he says, more a statement than a question, because the truth is, he already knows exactly what she means.

She looks into his eyes a little more intently, and kisses him once--so soft and quick that he doesn't have time to regret it as it's happening, and without even closing her eyes. And then she pulls back by a few inches, and her whole face _changes_.

It begins with her mouth, the corners pulling sharply downwards. Her cheeks draw themselves in slightly and her forehead flattens, furrowing slightly between her eyebrows. Her eyes, formerly wide open, half-lid themselves, all humor disappearing. Last of all, her chin juts upwards. Narvin thinks that the best mark of how completely she has transformed herself is that he cannot imagine calling her ‘Romana’ now. This is The Lady President. The image of this woman in his head is this image, and it only occurs to him how strange it has been seeing anything else now that he has this version back again.

“Coordinator,” she says, with an uninterested flick of her lashes.

He can feel the matching change that comes over his own face--everything sinking, any hint of emotion wiped clean, his brows set in a mocking slant. “Madam President.”

“We do our duty, don’t we, Coordinator?” she asks, coolly. “More than that. We _live_ our duty. I am the Lord High President, the property of Gallifrey. My mind ought always to be given over to my planet’s affairs. My energy and devotion belong to my world. What small time is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of my physical and mental health, I may take, but only because it is in Gallifrey’s interests that I keep myself in good order. I am not permitted cares which are not Gallifrey’s cares, or interests which will not advance my planet’s cause, except in the most limited possible way, and only then because I am a mere flawed mortal, and require _some_ time of my own if I am to continue to function. I know you understand what I mean, and feel the same.”

“Of course.”

She nods. “The trouble is that we are people, not machines. We have hearts. We _feel_. You and I, we channel our emotion into anger, because anger, at least, is _acceptable_. It is an expression of power, rather than weakness. We don’t _show_ what we feel; we cannot. The question is not whether we might like a fellow Time Lord as a person, but whether they are useful to our planet. If so, we deal with them, even if we loathe them; if not, we dismiss them, even if we adore them. Our emotions are free to tell us whatever they like, but we are not free to act on them. Thus the battle between ourselves and our personas.”

“So,” he says--a prompt, not a question.

“So,” she says, “the Lady Romanadvoratrelundar could never take a lover.” She looks up at him again, and gives her eyes permission to show what she’s feeling--or to _seem_ like it, he reminds himself. “My time does not belong to me, nor my energy. Even my body.” Her breath huffs through her nose in an expression of dark amusement. “If it were absolutely necessary for Gallifrey, I would auction myself to the highest bidder without complaint, though I sincerely hope it never comes to _that_. But no matter what I want, no matter what I _feel_ , I have no right to act upon it. Not unless, of course, I can summon a professional excuse.”

“I’m not certain I understand,” he says, though the roughness of his voice gives more away than he would like.

“Don’t you?” she asks. Before he can react, one of his hands is jerked to the side by an unseen force, and the metal binding snakes around it again. While his attention is occupied, Romana straddles his waist and spreads out full-length on top of him. When he looks at her, momentarily overtaken by shock, she quickly leans in and gives him a far more thorough kiss than any of the others. Her mouth is open to him, her tongue darting between her lips, her whole body straining into him. There is nowhere for him to escape, not pinned-down as he is, but he does have one hand free.

His plan is to pull her away by the hair, but that proves an immediate misstep. He has, it turns out, been suppressing more than he realized when it comes to Romana’s hair. To actually have his fingers buried in those silky strands only makes everything that much worse. Far from pushing her away, he finds himself pulling her closer, and then she _moans_ into his mouth and slides a matching set of fingers into his hair. Her hips undulate, once, in a wave that seems to pass upwards and downwards both, through her whole body, and he draws in a sharp breath as it becomes a tremendous effort to stop his own body from reacting.

 _This is a lie,_ he tells himself, as firmly as he can. _It’s a lie, it’s a lie, this is all a lie. She is acting, she is using you, she is manipulating you, she is laughing at you. Resist, and never stop resisting, and never forget that this is a lie._ But the taste of her mouth is true, and the slide of her skin against his is honest, and it is a minor agony to pull her mouth from his.

“Stop,” he says, roughly.

“I can’t have what I want,” says Romana. “No more can you. We can’t even _admit_ to wanting anything else, to hiding anything behind our anger and our pride. But,” the mask slips back over her face, her whole demeanor shifting, down to her manner of speech, “a Lady President needs allies. And a Coordinator of the CIA is... valuable.” 

A chill passes through him as he fully understands her point at last, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. She watches his eyes flash with comprehension, and smiles. Her genuine smiles have always left him inconveniently affected, but this smile isn’t like that. This is an ugly, petty expression of triumph that Romana has no business wearing, and it strengthens his flagging resolve. He jerks his neck away when she leans in to kiss him again, scowling as that hateful smile spreads still further across her face.

“It is a President’s prerogative to... _reward_ loyalty in any way she sees fit, Narvin,” Romana murmurs. She slides sideways to straddle his leg, kneeling slightly more upright above him. Catching Narvin’s free hand, she presses it to her chest, just below her breasts. “To... strengthen the bonds of friendship and unity between her government and the most powerful independent Agency on her world.” She is guiding his hand downwards, over her stomach, onto her thigh. The fabric of her nightgown shifts and transforms at the scrape of his skin, a terrain of unsteady ground. There is a metaphor there for the precarious world he currently occupies, frightening in its strangeness, full of occurrences that ought not to be coming to pass and are going on their way in spite of him.

“Romana,” he says, “this whole thing is farcical.”

“Oh, I entirely agree. But however absurd it might be, paying our due deference to the roles we’re meant to play is the only way this can happen.” She is still moving his hand with hers, sliding it down to her hem and then up again, beneath her skirt. “You pretend so hard that there’s nothing behind your mask that I think sometimes you’ve even convinced yourself, but I’m afraid that doesn’t work on me. I see straight through you, Narvin. We’re too much alike for me to help it.” The skin of her thigh is satin-smooth, and her legs are sliding apart. He cannot on any account allow her to keep going, but that doesn’t mean that he is capable of stopping her. “You do think of me, more than you should. You do care.” It is the unreality of the situation, he thinks, that prevents him objecting as she slides his hand up, up, until his palm is full of her _mons veneris_ , curls of hair scratching against his skin. She bends double to kiss the crook of his neck, tilts her head up to speak directly into his ear. “You do want me.” And Narvin’s last hope of turning back is lost as she presses forward on two of his fingers, easing them into her body.

Romana shudders, exhales sharply, bites down on Narvin’s earlobe for a moment. Her cunt is wet and soft and _tight_ around his fingers, but imagining how it would feel to do more than touch her isn’t what’s making him lightheaded with need. It’s the situation itself, the very fact that she is allowing this at all, giving of herself this way, _opening_ for him--trusting him, he thinks, and makes a despairing noise that is equal parts laugh and groan. He should pull his hand away, and he does, but only to gently work her a little wider before sliding his fingers more deeply inside her. Romana makes a small sound, slightly more dignified than a whimper. One of her hands is still resting at his wrist, her fingers stretched along the thin lines of his metacarpals, a tactile form of encouragement and consent that somehow makes the whole experience more heady and unreal. But her other hand is sliding over his chest and down, to scrabble at the laces of his trousers.

She realizes after a moment that there is an easier way, here in the Matrix, and the knots undo themselves at her mental command. He needs to say something. He cannot permit her to touch him. He lost the battle against his own arousal around the time his hand slipped under her skirt, or possibly when she kissed his neck. Narvin hasn’t permitted himself so much as an erection for what must be at least two centuries, and the last time anyone else touched him was decades before _that_. He had thought that was for the best, that depriving himself entirely would drive any hint of desire from his flesh. He believed that sparing time for the occasional careful affair would be nothing but a waste, and that even seeing to himself now and then was unnecessary. He has clearly been mistaken. His strict policy of enforced celibacy may have helped him to keep people at arm’s length, but now that Romana has forced her way past his armor, he is far _more_ vulnerable than he would otherwise have been. Even the directionless brushing of her hand over his groin as she struggled with his laces made him feel like his legs had been set afire. Her hand on his cock, skin-to-skin, and with _intent_ , will break any remaining semblance of his control within a matter of nanospans

“Ro... Madam President,” he says. His voice sounds frantic in his own ears, mortifyingly high-pitched, but continuing to speak is his only chance of stopping her. “This must _stop_.”

She looks down at him, her eyes dark, a hint of a smile playing around her lips. “Which is why you’ve stopped?” she asks.

He only then realizes that his fingers are moving, stroking in and out of her as her hips strain into the touch. He does stop, but doesn’t withdraw his fingers, and she uses her hand over his to guide him so that he’s replicating the same motion anyway. And in the meanwhile, her other hand slides beneath his waistband, and her fingers wrap decisively around his cock.

Narvin squeezes his eyes tight shut and, before he can think about it, lunges. His mouth meets Romana’s with a desperate hunger that he cannot recognize as a part of him. It is an outside force, belonging to no one, or perhaps to Romana, something that she is puppeting in him. She is right--he wants her--and yet she is wrong, in her way. This is something darker than want. He needs to _devour_ her, to consume everything that she is and be, in his turn, consumed. She is right--he belongs to Gallifrey, and he cannot surrender to her, and yet it seems that he cannot do anything else. And so let this fire she has kindled be his pyre, this his last act of self-immolation, and let she who has destroyed him catch and burn alongside as a fitting revenge.

Romana matches the fury of his kiss, but the touch of her hand is maddeningly measured. She has all the control he is currently lacking, and proves it by speaking between each fevered kiss. “You see through me just as easily.” She grinds down with her hips, working herself on his fingers. “But you refuse to let yourself believe what you see.” This time the break in her words is longer, their exchange of kisses more frenzied, both of them groaning into each other’s mouths, but Romana finally breaks away again. “I do want this,” she says. “Want you. But there’s only one way it can happen.”

Suddenly, Romana is drawing his hand away, out from under her skirt, moving it to rest on her hip, and then she’s planting both of hers to either side of his neck to prop herself up. The loss of her touch is like being roused from sleep to the cold reality of morning. He ought to be grateful to have regained some small semblance of clarity, but the dream from which she has woken him was sweeter than any lie he’s dared permit himself in so _long_.

But _is_ it a lie? She’s just said the opposite. And this is Romana, who doesn’t lie, who _won’t_. That must be just a tactic. It _can’t_ be just a tactic. He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t know anything. He knows that she has taken him from himself, torn him down, and remade him in her own image. He knows that she has done this so effectively that his instinct is to thank her for it and to beg for more. And he knows what she’s about to say, and the only answer he can give, and he laughs, and laughs, and chokes on it, and stops.

“Go ahead,” he says, defeated. “Say it.”

“If you trust me,” she says, her eyes earnest. “If we can work together, truly, _trusting_ each other, we can win against the masks, Narvin. If we can call it a strategic alliance, tell ourselves and anyone else who might ask that this is all for the good of Gallifrey, we can have what we both want.” She touches his cheek, tentatively. “We both fight so hard for our world. Neither of us should have to keep fighting alone.”

He believes her, because his supply of doubt has been used up, leaving him dry. “But first,” he says, “you need me to tell you about the Key.”

“Please,” says Romana, serious and intense and obviously affected. “I need that power, so much more urgently than I can express. If I’m right about what’s coming, it could do so much good. _Please_ , Narvin.”

He studies her, quietly, as she kneels over him. He studies her face, the openness in her eyes, the slight parting of her lips, the air of the unsheltered in every line of her. He studies her body--not completely bare, but visible, natural, _available_ in this unknown way. His eyes fix on her clavicle, and he lifts his free hand to run his thumb along that ridge of bone. He is aware even in the moment that this is a strange point upon which to fixate, but all he can think, now, is that he may never see her collarbone again. The loss of all of her, of everything she represents, is too profound to truly register, but this one detail is a pain small enough for him to feel. He tugs her down by the shoulder, and leans up as far as he can, and kisses her once where his thumb just rested. And then he leans his forehead against her shoulder, and speaks into her skin.

“I can’t,” he says. “Not even for you. I made a vow, Romana. I can’t.”

There are two nanospans of stillness. Romana bows her head to rest atop Narvin’s, and after a moment, he feels her lips brush his crown. And then, without ceremony or transition, the entire interrogation setup has vanished, and Narvin stands wearing his own robes, facing Romana in hers, back in the same Matrix corridor that he was searching when she caught him.

“You may go, Coordinator,” orders the Lady President, boredom in her tone, her mask fixed firmly back in place.

Narvin blinks. “You aren’t going to...”

“To what?” she snaps. “Torture you again? You’d die before you told me anything, and while replacing you would hardly be much trouble and the new Coordinator would almost certainly be less snide, officious and ill-mannered, there would be the hastle of explaining how you’d come to drop dead in the first place. I have more important things to do with my time.”

Narvin swallows. “I feel so fortunate to be less inconvenient to you alive than dead, Madam President,” he says, sounding no more than half as hollow as he feels.

“Feel free to express your gratitude by working _slightly_ harder at concealing your disdain for me,” she says. “At least when anyone else is watching. Now if you’ll excuse me, Coordinator, I have duties to attend to. I would suggest you don’t permit me to catch you in my information network again. Next time my hospitality might not be so cordial.”

She has vanished before he can supply a retort. Narvin stares around him, fighting to process everything that has happened in the past two spans, finding himself entirely unequal to the task. He glances down at himself, his Coordinator’s robes, the physical embodiment of his office, and focuses on the muddle of memory and emotion inside him, and _shoves_. He pushes it all away into a forgotten corner of himself. And then he straightens his spine, and composes his face, and blinks twice, and exhales.

The Coordinator of the CIA lifts one booted foot, striding confidently toward the nearest Matrix door, and doesn’t look back.

*

Romana hadn’t thought she would ever see these rooms again. With Pandora on her tail, House Heartshaven’s grand Capitol residence would have been a far too obvious bolthole for Romana to seek out. It seems a fair assumption that Pandora possesses the memories of Romana’s first incarnation, along with that body they belong to, and with how often Romana visited Heartshaven’s Capitol quarters as a child, how strongly they are marked in her memory as a place of safety and comfort, that will be one of the first places Pandora would think to search.

But Romana never visited or even knew of _this_ set of Capitol rooms until her return to Gallifrey from E-Space. After Romana’s father died, her mother left Heartshaven and returned to her birth House of Jurisprudence. These quarters belong to that House, and Romana’s mother met her here once or twice during Romana’s campaign. While the fact that Inquisitor Darkel is her distant cousin has always horrified Romana in the past, in this emergency it has become a distinct advantage. The _last_ place Darkel will ever think of searching for her enemy is in her own House’s rooms.

It’s as safe a place as any, at least at the moment. Romana’s retinue--perhaps she ought to think of them as an army, now, but that term seems impossible for a force so small--consists of nothing more than Leela, Narvin and a scant three dozen loyal members of the Chancellery Guard, and many of them have been wounded today to greater or lesser degree. Hallan was stasered, Leela knocked unconscious, Narvin nearly blown-up, at least half-a-dozen guardsmen shot as they broke Romana free from Pandora’s cells, and several more wounded or killed in the successful but costly mission to ground Gallifrey’s entire TARDIS fleet. Tomorrow, Romana will begin to search for allies, to organize a real resistance to Pandora’s illegitimate so-called Presidency, but for tonight, the best Romana can do is to keep her people alive and let them _rest_.

There is, however, one point too urgent to be allowed to wait for morning. Romana is mortified by the very _idea_ of this conversation, but it is absolutely necessary, and that’s all there is to be said. She is particularly reluctant to conduct it at night, in her bedroom, with no lighting lest they draw attention to their presence here, and at a moment when Narvin so deserves to be left alone to heal. But this set of quarters is meant to house no more than twenty, and when the rooms are being stretched to hold double that number, Romana is fortunate even to possess this much space to herself; there is nowhere else she can go. The only thing for it is to grit her teeth and assume her most dignified air. When the knock on her door signals that her Coordinator has received and obeyed his summons, Romana rises with exaggerated calm from the corner of her bed, and her call of “Come” is positively icy in its reserve.

“Madam President.” Romana looks Narvin over where he stands in her door. The shrapnel had been pulled from his body and his burns had been mostly healed by the time her guardsmen retrieved him from the medical center, and by now, the only visible evidence of his injuries is a bandage wrapped around his right arm and a patch of shiny new skin on his cheek. His robes, however, were damaged beyond repair. He now wears a soft, collarless shirt of a material that looks like white flannel, and a pair of red trousers like those belonging to her guardsmen. It is the only time she has ever seen him out of his robes except... well, except never. Events that may or may not have transpired within the Matrix bear no relation to the physical world, and the _last_ thing Romana can afford is to think of _that_ encounter just now. Though how she could help it given the subject she’s brought Narvin here to discuss, she can’t imagine.

“Coordinator,” she says. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you a chair, but as you can see, I haven’t any.”

“You’ve never offered me a chair before. I can’t imagine why you’d start now.”

“Well,” she says, “you _did_ save me from an assassination attempt today, at considerable personal risk. Regrettably, I am unable to offer you half my kingdom for reward, as I haven’t precisely got a kingdom just at the moment.”

“So you thought you’d offer me a chair that you haven’t got either.”

“When you put it like _that_ , it sounds silly.”

“But only when I put it like that,” he deadpans.

“Aren’t you at _all_ curious why I’ve summoned you here?”

“Not particularly, but I expect you’ll tell me anyway.”

“I need to ask you a question.”

“Well?”

“It’s about,” she draws in a deep breath, “the Key of Rassilon.”

On another man, Romana wouldn’t call the change that comes over Narvin a dramatic one. But for her Coordinator, who so tightly controls any emotion more vulnerable than annoyance, the noticeable swallow and the transformation in his eyes are indicative of extreme agitation. “Not the question you think,” she hurries to amend.

She thinks he may avoid her eyes, but instead he stares straight at her, tense as a cornered animal. “What is it?” he asks, voice dangerously rough.

“When I was speaking to Pandora today, she implied to me that she had possession of the Key. My instinct is to assume that she is bluffing, but it’s too important a question to leave to chance. Do you believe there is any possibility that she might have been telling the truth?”

He takes a moment to seriously consider the question. “I cannot imagine how,” he says. “There are... certain protections, around the Key. I would know if they had been disturbed.”

She nods, relieved. “Good. That’s all I needed to know. I’m certain you must be exhausted, Coordinator. I’ll let you...”

“Romana.”

She stops. Narvin calling her by her name is not a common occurrence. She has tried to forget the way he said it earlier today as he lay wounded in her arms, looking imploringly up into her eyes, confessing and asking her forgiveness. Before that, he hadn’t called her anything but ‘Madam President’ or ‘my Lady’ since...

“Yes?” she asks, intentionally terse.

“When you... the last time you asked me about the Key.” She wants to look away from him but she has no doubt he would take that as an expression of weakness, and so she defiantly holds his eye as he continues. “Was this why?” he asks her. “Because you were hoping to use it to stop Pandora?”

She nods. “I had seen... visions. Heard prophecies. About... becoming the Imperiatrix. I was hoping it wouldn’t ever have to come to that. I needed some way of demonstrating power, and possessing the Key might have worked even better than the title.” She looks away with a small sigh. “It’s too late now, in any case. The situation is already worse than I could have imagined. Gallifrey is at war, and if we should lose, the planet will fall into the hands of a violent, power-mad dictator.”

“And I could have stopped it.” The regret in Narvin’s voice makes her look sharply up at him again. His face is dark with misery.

“Probably not,” she says. Most days of the calendar, she would have agreed with him, but she can’t bring herself to tighten the noose when he’s already condemned himself to the emotional equivalent of a hanging. “It was only a desperate hope. I _might_ have frightened Pandora or Darkel or the Chapters into submission with some grand display of power, but even if I did, it wouldn’t have lasted for long. At best, it would have delayed the inevitable.”

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I deserve my share of the blame.” He scowls down at his own hands where they clench at the fabric of his trousers. “I believed that being entrusted with the Key meant that I was the only one who could ever know when it was in Gallifrey’s interests for it to be used. I told myself that I was enforcing necessary precautions, but the truth was that in believing myself to be Gallifrey’s only real defender, I was doing nothing but feeding my own arrogance. I gave myself far too much credit and you far too little, and now Gallifrey is at war because of it. If protecting the planet was the goal of leaving the Key in my hands, then I have failed spectacularly in that charge.”

Romana doubts he would be saying these things, especially to her, if he hadn’t suffered an unspeakably painful and trying day. She has never had the slightest skill in comforting others, but she does intend to try. Before she can think of anything to say, he’s looking up at her. “I ought to have trusted you from the beginning, my Lady,” he says. “I don’t know how much good it can do now, but at a time like this, you deserve to have every resource at your disposal.” He draws in a deep breath. “The Key of Rassilon is...”

“No!” Romana is across the room and actually pressing her hands to Narvin’s mouth before she is aware of it. “I don’t know how much of my mind Pandora can access at the moment. I don’t _want_ to know where the Key is, not now, it isn’t safe.” She takes her hands away. “You’re being far too hard on yourself, you know. Perhaps you have been proud, but so have I. I might have told you _why_ I needed the Key, but my evidence was so insubstantial, and I thought... well, I thought you would laugh at me if you knew that my concerns for the future were based on prophecies and dreams.”

“I wouldn’t have believed you,” he says. “I wouldn’t have believed _anything_ you said.”

“Possibly,” she says, “but I ought to have told you in any case. We’ve both suffered lapses of judgment, and for both of us, the problem was a lack of trust. I don’t know about you, but I hate making the same mistake twice.” She smiles slightly. “Keep the Key safe for me, Narvin. Yours are the only eyes I want watching over it.”

He looks at her hard for a moment, and then, to her general distress, he sinks to his knees. She thinks at first that his injuries are more severe than they seemed and that pain or faintness has brought this on, but she grows even more alarmed when it occurs to her that this is precisely what he meant to do.

“Madam President,” he says, solemnly, “I have always respected your office, but today... today, that came to mean something more to me. I will continue to voice my dissent when it is called for, because I believed, and still believe, that appointing me to my current position was an expression on your part of confidence in my judgment, and that I could not serve you by withholding it. But in the past I have also believed that voicing that judgment and then carrying out your orders, whether or not I agreed with them, was the extent of my obligation to your office. And today I came to understand that serving the Presidency requires something more: a faith in your vision for Gallifrey.” He looks her squarely in the eye. “You have that faith now, Romana. You have my trust.”

She stands speechless for a moment, and then swallows, and leads a vicious but successful skirmish against her own instinct to blush. “Do stand up, Narvin,” she says. “I appreciate the gesture, but you hardly need be so overdramatic about it.” She’s not certain it’s wise for her to touch him just now, but overcaution has never numbered among her vices. She takes Narvin’s elbows and helps to pull him up as she goes on. “Have you failed to recall the fact that I _tortured_ you, Coordinator? Surely it cannot be an indication of psychological health to fall to one’s knees and pledge devotion to a woman responsible for one’s torture.”

“You sound like the High Monan. And your goal was the protection of Gallifrey. I would have _asked_ you to torture me, if I had known that for certain.”

“If that last statement was meant to reinforce my faith in your mental health, it was a failure on several levels.”

“Because voluntarily torturing _yourself_ along with me wasn’t an expression of the same principle?”

Romana tries to reply, and stops. “Well,” she says, “I suppose you do have me there.”

Narvin isn’t actually _smiling_ , not with his mouth, but it’s there in his eyes. She only then realizes that her hands are still resting on his arms, and his on hers.

Romana thinks of the other events of that evening in the Matrix, and swallows. Everything she had done that night, everything she had said, it had all been made easy by the knowledge that her mission was so crucial. It was not only her right but her responsibility to say or do _anything_ that might make Narvin tell what he knew. Besides, the power dynamics of the situation had rested entirely in her favor. Statements that might otherwise have made her feel painfully vulnerable were easy enough to voice in a world that she could literally shape with a thought. Whereas here, in a borrowed bedroom, at a moment when she _is_ painfully vulnerable in a different sort of way--when Narvin’s allegiance could in the near future be the factor that rescues her planet, or restores her Presidency, or saves her life, or all of the above, and when Narvin’s _faith_ could prove her redemption in a different but no less crucial way--making him the same offer she did that night feels a herculean task.

“Narvin,” she says, carefully, “in case I’ve failed to express it, I am... suitably touched.” She fights not to bite her lip as she adds, “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“No, but I ought to.” She focuses all her energy on making the words sound casual. “I may not have chairs or kingdoms, but...” She cannot think of any way to end that sentence that sounds less than absolutely ghastly, even within her own head, and trails off.

Narvin is looking steadily at her. Only the slight sharpness in the set of his jaw betrays the intensity of the conversation. “But is there anything else that I want from you?” he asks.

She finds herself biting her lip again, and transforms it to a sort of peevish pout, which, when she thinks about it, isn’t really any better. “Within reason,” she says, excessively prim in her nervousness.

“There is one thing,” he says.

“Yes?” she asks, and curses her own breathlessness.

“I want the truth,” he says, and she feels herself fall back to earth with a plunk. “I _need_ the truth.” His eyes grow even more piercing. They have always been by far the most expressive part of him, and today he isn’t hiding anything. “Was there any part of that night that wasn’t an act?” he asks her. “Was anything you said true?”

She doesn’t know whether to bless him or curse his name for giving her such an easy out. “Of course it was an act,” she says. “I wouldn’t have said any of it if I hadn’t thought it might save Gallifrey.”

The openness in his eyes dissolves, and his jaw grows tight. “I see,” he says, and releases his grip on her arms. “Thank you for your honesty.” The words are decidedly cold. “If you’ll excuse me, Madam President,” he is already crossing the room towards the door, “I...”

“Narvin.” Her chest feels like it’s been clamped in a vice. She curses herself for speaking, as he turns slowly back to face her. And then she reminds herself, firmly, that she is the Lady Romanadvoratrelundar, Lord High President of Gallifrey, and that she is not afraid of _anything_. She swallows, and tries to put up her chin, which ends up a very halfhearted attempt, and forces herself, with tremendous effort, to meet his eyes. “It was an act,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean that what I said wasn’t true.”

His chest starts behaving just the same way hers is, she notices, painfully long periods of stillness followed by deep, unsteady breaths. “How much of it?”

She hopes against hope that the dark and the few steps of distance between them are enough to conceal the shaking of her hands, if not her voice. “All of it,” she says, only just louder than a whisper.

There is more than one point about Narvin which Romana would have liked to find impressive, if she had not strictly forbidden herself finding anything impressive about him. He is, for example, very still by habit, very controlled in his motions, but when he does move, he can be just as quick as Leela. Which in this particular case is uniquely advantageous, because Romana doesn’t have time to think, or to second-guess, or indeed to react at all before he has recrossed the room, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her. By the time she is able to consider the question, there is nothing for it but to twine her arms around his neck and firmly kiss him back.

“An expression of trust between the Celestial Intervention Agency and Her Lady President’s government?” he asks her, some microspans later, his lips still hovering over hers.

“Well,” she murmurs, “that’s what we’ll tell our alter-egos about it, anyway.”

“And what would you say about it to me?”

“I would tell you to stop arguing the semantics and kiss me again.”

He brushes his nose against hers, smiling the first completely open smile she’s ever seen him wear. “With pleasure, my Lady,” he tells her, and does.


End file.
